This paper describes a professional development workshop focused on attendance practices within the New York State public school system. The author outlines the workshop's coverage of accurate attendance reporting, stratification by day and period, and the use of the Attendance Tracking System (ATS). The paper connects the workshop's themes to the program outcome of School and Community Leadership, discusses implementation goals and challenges in a multi-class school environment, presents an evaluation tool used to gauge educator feedback, and reflects on how improved attendance tracking supports student achievement and upholds the educational leadership dispositions of excellence and ethics.
The activity completed was a professional development workshop focused on attendance in the New York State school system. It provided a wealth of information about the various facets of attendance, from how to accurately report it to different stratifications — by day and by period, for example. Each of these stratifications includes a different form on which to record student attendance.
The workshop was extremely comprehensive in that the information it provided applied to public schools throughout New York State. It was attended by numerous educational professionals from the surrounding areas of the five boroughs. In addition to yielding a considerable amount of information about how to professionally and accurately record attendance, it also provided a valuable opportunity to network with peers and to learn about their own challenges and solutions related to the various facets of taking and maintaining attendance.
The overarching themes of this activity were to reinforce the knowledge necessary to conduct attendance accurately. Accordingly, the workshop also focused on the many reasons why taking attendance is a vital aspect of working in a public school system. Doing so not only benefits students and their parents — by providing information about students' rate of actually appearing in class and (presumably) involving themselves in the learning process, which creates positive home/school relationships — but also benefits the school in emergency situations where it may be necessary to relocate. In such cases, communication regarding the presence of students is vital, and attendance is an integral part of that communication. Taking attendance is a necessary part of strengthening the relationship between school employees, parents, and the surrounding community.
These themes closely correlate to the rationale for the program outcome of School and Community Leadership. The outcome indicators for this program are to:
Build strong community relations by modeling and promoting equity, fairness, and respect among faculty, staff, students, parents, and community leaders.
Provide opportunities for stakeholders to develop and use skills in collaboration, shared decision-making, and responsibility for the purpose of maintaining a comprehensive program of positive home/school relationships.
Acknowledge and respect the goals, values, and aspirations of diverse family and community groups by engaging the support of business, philanthropic, political, social, and civic or faith-based organizations and other resources to enrich the school's climate, culture, and diverse learning infrastructure.
Maintain a broad communication network throughout the school and community by using a wide variety of print and electronic media while establishing a high level of visibility and active involvement among stakeholders (American College of Education, 2013).
The area of need identified in relation to the school is accurately maintaining attendance records for students throughout the entire school day when they are involved in multiple classes taught by multiple instructors. Attending the aforementioned professional development workshop provided a great degree of insight into how to achieve this objective. It is a teacher's legal responsibility to accurately maintain attendance records in New York.
Therefore, the implementation of the Attendance Tracking System (ATS) is necessary to facilitate at the school level. Some hardware is required to implement this system, which essentially requires teachers to scan their attendance results for their students on a "bubble sheet" (NYC Department of Education, 2013). Teachers will have until 5 p.m. to scan their particular roster of students — which varies by class — before that day's attendance is recorded in ATS. In this way, staff and administration can be kept informed by monitoring ATS records of student attendance and use those results to correspond with parents and family members accordingly.
"Goals and challenges in implementing systematic attendance tracking"
"Educator feedback on ATS and effects on student achievement"
"Linking attendance improvement to excellence and ethics dispositions"
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